Page 19 of Caution Tape

“What—what are you talking about? Just fucking let me go. Let me go right now. Right now. Right now, please.”

I shake my head. “No, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to hurt you. Very badly. But I’ve never killed anyone and I’m a little overwhelmed.” I gesture around at the plastic sheeting on the floor, tacked to the metal walls. There’s a gleaming steel table off in the corner, and totes of supplies. A rust spot looms on the wall to my left, like an old bloodstain, and I find it comforting. “I’ve killed some animals. Deer. Squirrels. Can’t kill dogs or cats, you know, people notice that.”

To his credit, Jerald seems to have some courage in him. A certain dignity. He shifts in the chair, struggling to straighten himself. I watch his jaw tighten, the mole on his chin standing out as his brown eyes flicker around the room. I can almost hear his brain whirring as it struggles to put together a plan.

Keep him talking,he’s thinking.Keep him talking and he’ll slip up. Keep him talking and the police will arrive. Someone saw him kidnap you. Someone knows you’re gone.

I have his phone. I reach over to plop his index finger on the sensor and open it. I scroll through and to my delight find that he has his credit cards saved to it. He has a few missed messages, including one that asks if he was still interested in buying a car.

“You don’t have a car?”

“Wha—no.” He realizes too late that giving me information isn’t in his best interest and falls silent.

“You’re making this too easy.” I buy a few tickets for a music festival in another state, then post on his Facebook, “I got tickets for Horizon Fest! Getting out of town for a few days, fuck yeah!”

I show the post to him. He frowns. “My friends won’t believe that.”

Shrugging, I turn the phone off. “It’ll fool the police for a little while. If anyone even notices you’re gone.” I scratch my head, before looking back down at my tools. “You ever turn on the TV to watch a movie, and all the choices you have kind of paralyze you? You want to watch everything and nothing all at the same time. If you pick a horror movie and it’s bad, well, you wasted that time you could have been watching something better. Trust me, there’s always something better.”

“Look dude, if you let me go, I’m not telling anyone. I’ll say someone tried to rob me. I didn’t see their face. I won’t tell, I promise. I sell drugs, alright? Just weed and some Adderall but like, come on, I don’t want to talk to cops.”

I ignore him. I’m mostly talking to myself. “What I’ve found is that you simply have to pick fast. Can’t linger. Gotta pick something immediately.” I snatch up the hammer, twirl it once in my palm, and then slam into the top of Jerald’s knee. I do it with the gleeful joy of a kid hitting the Test Your Strength game at a carnival. I do it so hard that I can imagine the bell rising up-up-up, making the lights go ding-ding-ding and I win all the prizes.

Jerald makes a lot of noise. His screams are clipped and hoarse, sounding more like disbelief than pain. They remind me of an alarm clock. “Ah! Ah! Ah!”

I lean in close and can smell a greasy, acrid scent. Fear-sweat, an odor like old socks intermingled with that metallic scent batteries give off. Hanging his head, his hair falls wetly across his face. His chin presses against his chest as he gasps for air. He’s trying to control the pain.

I let him rest for a long pause, at least until he looks up again. The moment he meets my eyes, the hammer arcs through air and hits the other knee. The vibration of it goes up my arm. A wetcrunch,not unlike biting into breakfast cereal, emits from his kneecap. The fabric of his jeans rip, and blood begins to well; a small volcano erupts out of his knee.

He bursts into frightened, childlike sobs. A thin, gleaming line of snot dribbles out of his nose, mixing with the tangle of facial hair on his upper lip. His entire body shakes, like he is being ravaged by a fever. He begins a desperate, blubbering plea. “Please. Please, puh-lease don’t do this—“

I zone out a little. There’s a plastic trigger guard on the nail gun that I can’t get off. It’s one of those thick, impenetrable zip ties. I try to break it off, but I can’t get enough leverage. I pick up the screwdriver, but it just scratches the nail gun and gets wedged between the trigger and zip-tie. I pull it out and toss it to the side and give Jerald an exasperated sigh. “Nothing’s ever simple, is it?”

“Let me go, let me go, let me go—“

“STOP ASKING FOR THAT!” I shriek, dropping the nail gun, letting it crash and clatter on the ground. I lunge at him, seizing his face in my hands and tilting it up to me. Closing my eyes, I attempt to collect myself.

“I am not going to let you go,” I tell him, gently, like he’s my student who simply doesn’t believe in himself. “If you do not stop, I am going to see how many nails your balls can take before you pass out.”

His words cut off abruptly in his throat, his eyes bulging. I see a bit of blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth; he’s biting his tongue to keep from making noise.

I return to the nail gun. After some twisting, the zip-tie pops off. With trembling hands, I load a rack of long, silvery nails into the slide mechanism and rack forward. I wonder if this will become something I do to all my victims, or if it’s a once in a while thing like when the mood strikes me.

On Thursdays, it’s nails. Saturday’s chainsaws.

I’m musing on this, fiddling with the tool, when Jerald interrupts.

“Is this about Cora?”

I glance at him. That mole catches my eye again resting just above his chin; I can see it underneath his beard. It moves with his face, a jostling brown dot that jumps and quivers.

He’s still talking. “You were watching her at the party. It’s fine, I’m not interested, really, go ahead bro—hey—hey—WAIT—“

I jam the nail gun flush against his chin. I push it upward, like an electric shaver, the plastic prong guards on either side of where the nail comes out rasps against his facial hair making a crinkly sound that bothers me more than I would imagine, but it makes me feel justified.

When I squeeze the trigger, something fascinating happens.

First, the nail blasts through his flesh and wedges halfway into his jaw. Thethwackof the gun firing and the sicklygalucksound of the metal splintering bone sends a delicious thrill down my spine, and I can’t help but groan in delight.

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